VN shares sink as worries about virus-hit market arise

Outside a Vincom shopping centre in Ha Noi. The mall operator Vincom Retail's shares (HoSE: VRE) plunged 6.8 per cent on Monday. - Photo hanoimoi.com.vn

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange tumbled 4.86 per cent to end at 662.26 points.

The HNX-Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange fell 4.18 per cent to close at 93.28 points.

The VN-Index declined a total of 1.92 per cent and the HNX-Index fell total 4.36 per cent.

A total of nearly 279 million shares were traded on the two bourses, worth VND3.87 trillion (US$164.8 million).

Of the total figure, 219 million shares were exchanged via order-matching system, worth VND2.68 trillion.

The market suffered from poor market sentiment as investors worried about the increased number of coronavirus infection cases in the country, securities firms reported.

As of Monday, 203 coronavirus infection cases had been reported in Viet Nam. The number has increased sharply from only 16 as of March 6.

Large-cap stocks were hit by a strong sell-off again on Monday, Thanh Cong Securities Co (TCSC) said in its daily report.

“Today’s trading proves investors are still cautious and skeptical about the current market movement amid the widespread coronavirus both inside and outside the country,” the company said.

Normally, the market would pick up as investors bet on listed firms to release good earnings reports for the first three-month period of the year.

However, the impact of the coronavirus on the economy is severe, so the Q1 corporate earnings outlook is quite gloomy, the company said.

“Poor corporate earnings expectations would also have a bad impact on the local market,” TCSC said.

Blue chips also suffered from profit-taking after they helped the VN-Index make a three-day rally last week, MB Securities Co (MBS) noted.

The VN-Index increased by a total of 5.59 per cent from Wednesday to the end of last week.

Another factor that also suppressed the market was the sinking of oil prices and foreign net selling, MBS said.

Crude prices tumbled 5.3-8.8 per cent to trade at $20.37-22.74 a barrel on Monday. Oil has lost two-thirds since early January.

Foreign investors on Monday net sold a total of VND160 billion worth of Vietnamese shares.

Pressured by those factors, the large-cap trackers VN30-Index and HNX30-Index declined 3.78-4.55 per cent on Monday.

Among the worst decliners were property firms Vinhomes (VHM) and Vincom Retail (VRE), SSI Securities (SSI), and lenders VPBank (VPB), MBBank (MBB), Techcombank (TCB) and Sacombank (STB).

Those shares plunged between 6.8 per cent and 7 per cent.